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by jjav
1874 days ago
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> limiting the supply of doctors Possibly, but the cost of doctors (+nurses, technicians, etc) is in the noise, just a distraction. The vast majority of the cost of medical care in the US goes to the middlemen who contribute no value at all, just extract profit. A 15 minute session with a general practicioner here (CA) costs around $300. That doctor isn't making $1200/hr ($2.5M/yr). That doctor is likely only making a bit over 200K:
https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/family-phys... The other $2M+ are going hangers-on who're not contributing to health care, just inserting themselves into the chain to get rich. Take a look at the billions in revenue collectively by all insurance companies. That's all a tax on health care that provides no value. |
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The biggest driver of healthcare is that Americans just consume a lot of it. We get surgeries, we opt for long, expensive treatments at the end of our lives, we use extremely sophisticated and expensive medical equipment a lot, we pay people to take care of our old people exorbitant sums of money.
Like, in other countries, when your lungs and kidneys start going, you don't go to the hospital for a multiple surgery. When you fall and you can't move around and wipe your own ass, you don't get moved into a facility where people are paid to take care of you, you move in with your family. And, if you don't have those options, you die.
I'm with you that the system is fucked but the underlying reason doesn't _really_ have anything to do with greed in medicine and everything to do with the way that we treat medicine culturally: the duty that children (don't, in this country) have to care for their elders, the attitude we have about prolonging death. That every part of the medical system says: we will never, ever make the decision to let someone pass away, even when "fixing" their problem (of death!) with all the technology and labor we've got turns out to be ludicrously expensive.